On Thursday, August 21, the Friends of Mandell Park outgoing president Stanley (Skip Almoney), incoming President Karen Anne Vinson, joined by Mayor Parker, Houston Parks and Recreation Director Joe Turner, Council Members Cohen, Cristie, and Robinson, and hundreds of current and former neighbors gathered under tents and wall seats while a violin duet played for a ribbon cutting ceremony to commemorate the renovated park.

Mayor Parker summarized the history of the project. Skip Almoney introduced Marianne Jones reviewed fund raising effort and thanked major donors. Mandell Park is on a 1.2 acre lot that has been vacant for more than 20 years. In 1982, it was acquired for a branch library site and demolished residential and commercial buildings, leaving the space vacant. But the Houston Public Library chose to establish a site on the Campanile space on Montrose Ave, the curent neighborhood Library. The site on the corner of Richmond and Kendall, became a dumping site, abandoned and overgrown. but at least one neighbor, Meredith Burke, who lived in a home at the corner of Bonnie Brae and Mandell, the southern boundary of the lot, believed it would make an excellent location for a community garden, and more particularly an organic garden. Ms. Burke has since moved from Houston, and the home she lived in has been demolished, leaving her lot vacant, but for many years she worked to develop the community garden. “Meredith Garden” marked with an iron open gateway, is named in her honor. In 2003, the site was transferred to the Parks and Recreation Department for development as a Park, but with no formal design or dedicated budget.

Nevertheless, the park continued as a quaint but popular community flower and vegetable garden, benefiting from volunteer support from dozens of neighbors. Gradually, with the support and constant advocacy of local leaders notably including Skip Almoney, the plans began to take shape. Parks and Recreation Director Joe Turner showed a pile of dozens of email printouts from Almoney dating from as far back as 2004 urging progress and funding for the project. Marianne Jones recognized some of the major donors began to adopt the project, and they raised over $1 million to fund a design that would would encourage ample creative gardening and potentially become a destination point for visitors to the area.

All the speakers in the program agreed that the newly opened site far exceed the initial expectations of the first supporters. It includes sprawling lawns, walled flower beds that can serve as seating areas, and walkways. The long-term visionaries of the project are to be congratulated.

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Marc was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents were divorced during his early childhood and his mother was remarried before he started school. His stepfather was a former United Nations lieutenant-colonel who spoke five European languages fluently. He taught Marc French at home and encouraged his language skills at school. With a myriad of international friends, contacts, and cross-cultural discussions at home, surrounded with world maps, atlases and globes, Marc was “world citizen” by the time he started Harvard College in 1970, majoring in pure mathematics.
Marc's interest in the arts and photography also dates from his childhood. He won an art critique essay contest in 1966, where the first prize was his first camera. During the summer of his sophomore year of college, he participated in a Christian Leadership Study tour of 17 nations. Two years while starting a Master's in Divinity at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, he met and married Judy Lokyin Chu, who was born in Hong Kong.. They returned to France in 1976 when Marc transferred to the Faculte Libre de Theologie Reformee at Aix-en-Provence. Two of his five children were born in France. Four of his seven grandchildren are dual French citizens. They returned after 4 years in France and one in Algeria when Marc enrolled at Harvard Law School in 1981.
Life in southern France included scores of opportunities to see works of Cezanne, Gauguin and van Gogh that were produced in the same region.
Marc's career has included pastoral ministry, mission work, teaching mathematics in French and English, practicing and teaching law in Massachusetts, teaching theology in French in Quebec, landscape photography, and photo-journalism in Houston.